Process Gates as Scar Tissue

~380 Words | ~1.5min Read

You know the QWERTY keyboard, right? Did you know it was invented to slow typists down? No, really! They were trying to prevent typewriter jams. Except it didn’t even solve the jamming problem. Yet here we are, still using it more than a century later. An organization’s process gates often work the same way. They are solutions designed for problems that once existed. Do those problems still exist? Today’s Process inherited from constraints that may have long since disappeared!

AI promises to 10x, (no wait, 100x!), our delivery speed. But how do we actually capture 10x the value? The bottleneck isn’t the technology. Writing more code doesn’t mean more dollars! Our bottleneck is our process for getting the dollars. It’s the accumulated process gates we built when development was slow and expensive. These gates are an accretion from mistakes of the past. Think Natural human reactions to real system problems. Both the formal and informal gates control how work flows (or doesn’t) through the system.

Now, your organization’s processes are complex, working systems. They evolved over time from simple working systems. Shaped by the challenges, technologies, and knowledge you had at the time. Gall’s Law tells us that a complex system that works is always evolved from a simple system that worked. Now our existing systems account for constraints that existed at the time. When designing for new capabilities, we must ask new questions. First, which rules cover for limitations that no longer exist? And Second, what is the new simple working system?

These gates, this organizational scar tissue, accumulates over time. it may take surgical intervention or other massive disruptions to fix. Start by striping the process back to basics. For example, start with your emergency hotfix process. The absolute minimum steps you’ll accept when everything is on fire. That’s your true minimum viable process. High risk, yes. But it reveals what you actually need.

From there, build intentionally. The simple system is a loop. It must feed itself. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Repeat. Only add gates back when there’s obvious value gain. Design from the technology, regulations, and knowledge you have today, not yesterday’s constraints.

We don’t need to make our current process faster. We need to build a simple working process for today’s needs, from today’s resources!